Painted in pastels and surrounded by a white picket fence, it was an anomaly in a hardscrabble part of town where the roads are narrow and street lights are scarce.

The home was a gift the 80-year-old widow received a decade ago after a local TV news program reported on her deplorable living conditions.

But after that, Ballard faded back into obscurity. One of the few white residents in the mostly black neighborhood, she was known on her street as a reclusive woman who loved her cats and never had visitors, other than the few friends who helped her out.

She loved to watch The Young and The Restless and sports on TV. She loved to read romance novels, smoke cigarettes and drink Schlitz — the beer favored by her late husband. And that was her world.

A creature of habit, she lived alone. And on Oct. 6, she died alone.

Ballard had no family that can be found. Three weeks after her death, her body remains unclaimed at the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office.

If no one steps forward to claim Ballard, she will likely be headed for a pauper's grave.

That saddens Lorenzo "Red" Jackson, an employee at the corner store who took groceries every day to Ballard's house in the 10500 block of Wicklowe, off the Eastex Freeway.

"I would like to see her have a proper burial," Jackson said Thursday when he learned the woman he called "Mama" was still at the morgue. "I feel like she deserves that."

Ballard's extended stay at the morgue "would sadden her, the Miss Wendy I know," Jackson said. "Her husband died years before her, and I'm sure she made sure he had a decent burial."

Also distressed by Ballard's forgotten status are employees at Gables Residential, the development company that tore down her dilapidated house and built a new cottage for her in 1997 as one of its first community service projects.

"When it's all said and done, it does make you sad that someone can just be out there and nobody cares," said Pauline Martin, a former Gables employee who helped with Ballard's home improvements a decade ago.

The Medical Examiner's Office released Ballard's name this week on a list of a dozen people whose bodies remain at the morgue, either because they had no family or because no relatives have been found.

The staff is hoping anyone who knows any family members related to Ballard will contact them at 713-796-6774.

"We do see a common pattern among people with no next of kin," said Dr. Jennifer Love, forensic anthropology director at the Medical Examiner's Office. "They are reclusive — they're on the fringes of society. So no one seems to know them."

Ballard never had a driver's license, and never registered to vote. No marriage records can be found in Texas for her nuptials to her husband, Sylvin K. Ballard, who died in 1989.

Some neighbors say she had a daughter, perhaps in East Texas, but they never saw a younger woman visit. Ballard's only apparent contact with the outside world was the brief chit-chat she had with neighbors who looked in on her.

"I've been living here for 40 years, and I've never seen anybody over there," said her next-door neighbor, Jerald Wyatt.. "She just didn't have nobody."

Pauper's grave most likely

Three weeks after her death at Ben
Taub General Hospital
, the lights are still on in Ballard's cottage. Her cats, alarmingly thin, still run around her yard.

The Medical Examiner's Office, which has not yet determined Ballard's cause of death, says it has no authority to go inside her home to look for personal information because she died in a hospital and not in the house itself.

If no family is found after all leads are exhausted, the medical examiner could release Ballard's body to a friend, if one steps forward to take responsibility for her burial expenses.

Jackson found Ballard unresponsive, on her living room couch, when he stopped by to deliver groceries on Oct. 3.

Ballard had not been feeling well and had resisted his efforts to call a doctor for several days, so Jackson feared the worst when he heard her breathing strangely and saw her eyes rolled back into her head.

"I kept calling her name and saying, 'Miss Wendy, Miss Wendy!' She wouldn't respond, so I called 911," he said.

When the ambulance arrived, Jackson said he locked up the house and gave the key to the paramedics. Since Ballard's death, he returns nightly to feed her cats in her driveway.

Jackson grieves for the woman who affectionately called him "Buddy" and eagerly looked forward to his visits, when he would bring cinnamon rolls, Vienna sausages, chips and cigarettes from the store where he works.

"She would tell me, 'Buddy, I don't know what I would do without you.' Or she'd say, 'Sit down, Buddy, and stay awhile.' I don't think she was really happy about being secluded like that, but she never said anything about it," he recalls.

Ballard was apparently so used to being on her own that she seemed somewhat bewildered when Gables Residential employees, subcontractors and suppliers swooped in to help her after KPRC-TV reporter Emily Akin aired a story about the elderly woman's former home in 1997.

Ballard was living in her roach-infested garage with no running water because there were large holes in the roof of her home, Akin reported.

Ballard had promised her late husband she would never leave their home, said Dennis Rainosek, vice president of portfolio management for Gables Residential.

"She was kind of a private person. I just recall her being so thrilled about somebody coming in to try to help her. I think she wondered why people were doing that," Rainosek said, chuckling at the memory Friday.

Overjoyed by 'dollhouse'

The new cottage, encompassing just 480 square feet, was built in three weekends.

"It ended up being beautiful. It looked like a dollhouse when we were finished," Rainosek said.

The end result overwhelmed the fiercely independent woman, who began to cry when she saw her new residence and asked, "Oh my goodness, I'm going to live here?"

Ballard also received new furniture that was donated to decorate the tiny house. "All these people who helped me are angels," she told KPRC-TV in 1997.

The few people who knew Ballard are hoping for a similar happy ending here — that her body will perhaps find a permanent resting place.

"You would think somebody would have claimed her by now," said Linda Bolton, whose parents knew Ballard and her husband for years. "I wonder — what happened to her? It's like she didn't have nobody."